The Philippines on Friday handed over the reins of a new Muslim-led territory to rebel leaders who waged a decades-long fight for autonomy, but are now tasked with securing peace and prosperity. President Rodrigo Duterte personally swore in Murad Ebrahim, head of the Catholic-majority nation's largest Muslim group, as interim chief minister at a symbolic Manila ceremony.

It comes after voters decisively backed in January the founding of the so-called Bangsamoro region in the south, the culmination of a peace deal to end a separatist insurgency that had killed some 150,000 people since the 1970s.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019